Intensive Beach

I had signed up to take an intensive class in Unitarian Spiritual Practice as a student at large at Meadville Lombard Theological School, a week of intensive immersion in learning the spiritual practices of our Unitarian ancestors, mainly the Transcendentalists. Rev. Rob Hardies was going to be teaching it, And it was going to be at Ferry Beach, on the coast of Maine. This was a double attraction, important learning and agreeable location, so I was sure it would be worth the rather astonishing cost.

Now I can report that it was a good choice. Seventeen of us gathered six hours a day for five days in a large room normally used for things involving yoga mats and exercise balls. We had read a large number of books and articles and signed up to do presentations on others that not all of us were reading. (I was part of the Theodore Parker team). I confess, I had not been as well prepared as I intended to be, but I was able to hang onto the thread of the conversation throughout.

The practice of self-culture was at the center of Transcendentalist spirituality, a practice that owed a lot to the way the Puritans had done things before, but also reached across the Atlantic to the German and English Romantics. It had everything to do with starting your day intending to become a better person, examining yourself on a daily basis through keeping a journal and reflecting prayerfully, and consecrating your life to the good of all. In their hands, at that time in the development of American culture, it became a powerful tool for social change. It can be argued that echoes of self-culture still echo down the years in our culture today. As a particularly poignant example, we listened together to Barak Obama's acceptance speech and heard them.

And all week we had a succession of the kind of sweet summer days that make people come back to the Maine coast year after year. Sunshine, a little breeze, cool at night and warm in the day. Not too hot. The water, of course, was too cold for real swimming, which was just as well, since we were not really free during the prime beach hours. There was plenty of walking on the beach, enjoying the porch facing the sea, listening to the waves, smelling the air, and imbibing the sense of peace that comes with all this beachiness. How could we keep on being up tight in a place designed to let go, surrounded by others doing much less stressful things than taking a graduate level Seminary class.

I am heading home refreshed and inspired, ready to start the church year with the spirit of those New England ancestors who loved Nature, loved one another, and loved the Spirit.

Spiritual but not religious

When I read that there are more people out there in the world who claim to be Unitarian or Unitarian Universalist than there are members of our congregations, I am really confident that we have quite a congregation out there of folks who say they are "spiritual but not religious". True, some of those self-described Unitarian Universalists who don't attend our congregations are more skeptical than spiritual, but there are those who really do think they can be spiritual on their own.

To some extent, it's possible. Many of us prefer the church of nature, taking time out on weekends to go hiking or cross-country skiing or birding or whatever. This is good. Nature can be spiritually nourishing. Our spiritual ancestor, Henry David Thoreau, turned to nature for spirituality more than to other humans. But his friend, Ralph Waldo Emerson, chided him for being too often alone, and urged him to take someone else along on his rambles. Emerson thought there could be no spirituality without human companionship, it seems. Others of us just live our lives, reading books that remind us of the spirit, Conversations With God, Tuesdays with Morrie, books by Thich Nhat Hanh or the Dalai Lama, and contemplating life in what we hope is a spiritual way. But what is spirituality if it does not require anything of you beyond reading books? The spirituality based on books --even the spirituality based on attending occasional weekend workshops -- this is also incomplete without people with whom to talk it over, without the challenge to actually put the spirituality into practice.

Being "religious" can get to be a problem, though. You go someplace where people all believe some things in common, and what if you don't agree? I'm thinking there really are only a couple of things we believe in Unitarian Universalism, when it comes right down to it:
We believe in welcoming. We believe in trying to find our own spiritual paths. We believe in testing our experiences of the source of meaning and guidance through sharing with others as well as thinking it over for ourselves. And we believe in reaching out to help others, no matter where we or they are on our spiritual journeys. And that's about it.

Is it a religion? We think so. But you don't have to be "religious" to be part of it.